


if not by blood, then siblings by bloodshed

by deepestfathoms



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: A Vomit-Covered Shirt That Gets Worn For Half Of The Story, Animal Attack, Animal Death, Aragon is a loving mama to two orphans, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Self Harm With An Axe, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cats, Crows, Cynophobia, Dark Magic, Death, Dehumanization, Dehydration, Depression, Dogs, Elizabeth is a Little Shit, Eventual Happy Ending, Families of Choice, Fear The Dogs, Flower Crowns, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Graphic Description of Corpses, Heavy Angst, Human Sacrifice, Inspired By A Plague Tale, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Joan Needs A Hug, Joan has PTSD, Joan is 14, Katherine Howard Needs A Hug, Kidnapping, Kitty doesn’t understand the concept of self harm, Kitty has magic, Kitty is 7, Kitty misses her mummy :(, Maggots, Mary is Big Jealous, Monsters, Murder, Orphans, Pain, People Getting Fucking Eaten Alive By Rats And Dogs, Plague, Plague Doctors, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, Protective Siblings, Putting Kids In Cages, Rats, Sisters, Sleep Deprivation, Starvation, Survival Horror, Survivor Guilt, Tiny Kat AU, Torture, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence, Vomiting, Wilderness Survival, Will anyone read this?, also they have a murder cat, because there’s a lot of death, by choice, did I already put that tag for Death?, don’t get attached to anyone, god this fic just keeps getting darker and darker, his name is Mercy!, hopefully, just in case, mainly angst but there’s some fluff, oh yeah!, please I’m desperate, pour one out for all the dog lovers, so much pain, someone save these girls, the bloodiest tiny kat AU you will ever read, theyre not related, yall this fic is FUCKED UP, you never know what my crow brain will do next
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 07:07:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22492036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepestfathoms/pseuds/deepestfathoms
Summary: After a tragic raid that leaves London in shambles and the queen dead, two young girls are left on the run from a furious king’s army and a dark plague infecting the land. Their destination is Catherine of Aragon’s palace, but first they have to get through the wrath of the illness, and many, many bodies.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	1. Blood Makes Noises

Lady Jane said Kitty was a strange child. That she…had gifts. That was why she wasn’t allowed to play with the other children and had to do weird training all the time. Personally, Joan thought it was odd, but she didn’t think much of it. She kind of wished she was Jane’s ward, too, but those were fantasies she kept to herself- or used to comfort herself at night.

Being a maid wasn’t all that bad. Sure, it was, again, nothing in comparison to being Lady Jane Seymour’s personal ward, but there were some perks. Like…not being homeless! Having a room in the castle was a good one. Maybe the only perk. Cleaning wasn’t all that fun. But Joan did enjoy stable work, believe it or not.

That’s where this tale starts, actually.

In a stable with very spooked horses.

Joan didn’t know what was bothering them. All the royal horses were uneasy and disturbed in their stalls, neighing and shifting anxiously.

“What are you gawking at?“ Joan asked, rubbing a grey mare’s neck. “There’s nothing…here…” When she went to survey the stable again, she noticed something. A large hole in the corner. Out of it, a thick, black mass bubbled into the open air. It’s churning over itself, like it’s struggling with something within.

Joan stepped back, horrified. The horses shriek. Several of them kick down their stall doors and flee the stable right as the normal stablehand enters. He’s drunk and very angry with the animals getting out.

“Joan!” He yelled, “What the fuck did you do!”

“T-Terrance!” Joan squeaked, “There’s something here!”

“No! There isn’t! Because, if you haven’t noticed, the horses are fucking gone!!” Terrance stomped over,.

Stomped over just a few steps too far.

A tendril of inky blackness snaps forward and whips around his leg. He stumbles, howling in pain.

Joan is screaming before she can even realize it. She goes to Terrance’s aid by grabbing his hand and attempts to pull him free. It helps some, but the tentacle is still crushing his leg in its grip. She hears the sizzle of burning flesh, and Terrance arms heaves a great sob. Her strength falters when she hears a horrible tearing sound.

Terrance shrieks as the flesh on his arm rips slowly, like the bursting of seams. First the skin goes, then the muscles and tendon, and, finally, the bone. Tendrils wrap around his wrists, then his legs and throat. He’s dragged into the black, writhing mass as his arm gave way, flinging Joan onto her back, and there’s nothing she can do to help. His screams continue for several seconds before dying out.

Joan sits up shakily, but freezes when she sees the bloody severed arm she still has in her grasp. Stricken by terror, she stares at it, trembling.

The bulbous black mass shifts audibly, crunching the bones of its prey in its bulging girth. It retreats slowly into the hole, which catches Joan’s attention and gives her a chance to escape.

She runs out in near tears, her stomach twisted in horror. Her mind keeps replaying the sight and she’s about to sprint to the castle in search of the queen when the foliage to the sides of the stable rustles, and out step half a dozen men and women. Each is armed, each looks at Joan threateningly, and each is clad entirely in black.

She doubts they are there to help or comfort her after the horror she witnessed.

One of the black-clad men carries an ash bow in one hand. He steps forward, expression malevolent.

“One lone child,“ He said, “Tell me, girl, where is the queen?”

Joan’s muscles clench, her eyes widen even further, and she feels a bead of cold sweat trickle down her back.

The black-clad archer, clearly the leader here, pulls another arrow from his quiver and nocks it to his bowstring.

“Hand over the coin you’ve, girl, slowly. Then tell us where Lady Jane Seymour is. No sudden movements, or this next arrow goes through your heart.”

Joan remains still, her mouth half open in shock. She can tell the man is getting impatient the longer she doesn’t reply, so he motions for his followers to advance into the city while he and one other stayed back to off the useless girl.

“Pathetic little thing, aren’t you?” The archer said, “You probably don’t have anything good on you, anyway.”

Joan’s heart was two seconds away from bursting at the flint tip of an arrow when a deep rumbling came from the stable. The archer falters and he and his companion look towards the wooden doors, weapons ready. Joan feels lightheaded as the noises get louder and louder and…

All at once, they stop and a dog trots out of the barn. It’s a little thin and scruffy, but a plain dog nonetheless. The paid of raiders blink and then laugh loudly.

“A dog got you spooked, Brutus!” The second man said to the archer, chortling.

“Me? You should have seen your face!” The archer, Brutus, apparently, snorted. “Now…where were we?”

The weapon was back on Joan, but she couldn’t seem to focus on the face that she was about to be killed. Where did that dog come from? It hadn’t been in there when…

Suddenly, the hound is upon the second raider. It leaps at him before he even really knew it was coming and knocked him to the ground, its powerful jaws snapping at his throat. The archer whirled around and screamed a very startled, “HOLY SHIT!” at the bloodbath the dog was creating.

The second raider is dead quickly and the archer realizes he was next. He tried to defend himself, but the dog bites into his thigh and he’s on the ground. His leather armor proves to be worthless against the hound’s jaws as its torn off and his flesh is exposed to open air.

Joan watches in horror as the dog began ripping chunks from the man’s genitals. Its teeth first catch on the testicles and tear them off so easily, scarfing them down before biting onto the penis and removing a large mass of flesh. The member soon only dangled from a few strips of skin and muscles before even that is gone.

Finally, once the archer’s pelvis became a mess of bright red and pink, Joan thinks to run.

She sprints down the street, noticing whorls of smoke rising up from several parts of the city. She can hear screaming of women and children, and that just urges her forward faster.

Joan tore open a back door to the castle and scrambled inside. Her lungs were burning, but she just kept on running, desperate to get to Lady Jane Seymour’s chambers.

However, that plan was halted when she was suddenly grabbed.

Joan let out a muffled scream as her mouth was covered and she was dragged into a small side room in the kitchen. She sobbed and shook her head, desperately trying to get away, but the grip was strong.

“Hush, little one, you’re okay.”

Joan froze. She knew that voice…

She snapped her head up and saw the queen herself holding her. At her side, Kitty was clinging to her dress. They both looked very nervous.

“L-Lady Jane,” Joan whimpered. She all but collapsed into the queen’s arms, crying in horror. “I-it- L-Lady Jane, it was so- I saw-”

“Shh, shh,” Jane kneels down beside her, cradling her protectively against her chest. She strokes the weeping child’s hair soothingly. “You’re okay… It’s going to be okay.”

Joan shook her head while sucking in a shaky breath.

“Y-you don’t-”

“Shh,” Jane hushed her again, “I know you’re scared, darling, but I need you to be strong. At least until we get out of the city. Then I’ll hold you and you can tell me what happened. Can you do that for me?”

Joan really didn’t want to go back outside after what she had seen, but something told her Jane already knew. She sniffled and nodded.

“Good girl.” Jane smiled.

She helped Joan to her feet and took one of her hands. The other was holding Kitty’s, who was silent through Joan’s partial breakdown. Both children exchange worried looks.

“Come, little ones,” Jane whispered, “And stay quiet. Don’t make a noise.”

Getting out of the castle was a painstakingly slow and tense affair. Raiders were stalking through the hallways, but outside was much worse.

The sky was clouded with smoke. The streets were filled with screaming. The smell of burning flesh wafted throughout the entire city.

“Shh,” Jane murmured when Kitty whimpered at the scent. She took her hand away from Joan to cover Kitty’s eyes, making the older girl have to cling to her sleeve as they moved carefully. “It’s almost over, my love…”

They were in the garden. Joan always loved the garden. She knew Kitty loved the garden, too. She sometimes saw the younger girl picking flowers and making them into crowns, which she would give to Jane. But now the beautiful greenery has turned into a labyrinth of golden blazes. The thick walls of grey smoke were suffocating to walk through and flames licked desperately at any bare flesh. One of the three would occasionally hiss softly as they were burned.

“Here we are,” They stopped at a large crack in the garden wall, which led out of the city. She gently nudged Kitty towards it. “Go on.”

“Wh-what about you?” Kitty asked.

“I’ll meet you on the other side,” Jane told her. “Go. Go through. Hide once you get out, alright?”

Kitty hesitated, hugged Jane, then slid through the crack.

Jane stared at the space where her ward used to be for a moment, then turned to Joan. She sets both hands on the girl’s shoulders.

“Listen to me, Joan,” She said, her voice hardening. “You need to protect Katherine, alright? Don’t let anything happen to her.”

“Wh-what? What about-”

“Go to Catherine of Aragon. She’ll help you.” Jane went on.

“Lady Jane-”

“Please do this for me, Joan. You two need to protect each other. There are things you don’t k-”

Joan couldn’t even muster up the will to scream as blood squirted onto her face. She watched in horror, tears spilling from her eyes once again as Jane gagged on the arrow lodged through her throat. She caught the queen’s body, nearly falling over from the sudden weight, and felt the tip of the arrow poke into her shoulder, shoving it back further in Jane’s neck. A second arrow comes flying and nails Jane in the back, causing her to make a garbled choking noise and foam bright red at the mouth.

It gets all over Joan.

Finally, the scream bubbles to Joan’s throat. In a sudden rush of fear, she shoves Jane’s body off, which she immediately regrets.

“I’m so sorry,” Joan wept. She almost crumples to her knees beside the queen, but a watery gag and spill of blood keeps her upright. She thinks Jane is trying to tell her something, and she has a guess what it is.

“I’m sorry.”

Joan whispers that one more time before slipping through the crack in the wall and leaving Jane to choke and bleed.

Kitty is waiting on the other side in a bush. She perks up and scampers over to Joan, only to have her hand grabbed roughly.

“J-Joan?” The younger girl stammered.

“Let’s go!” Joan said, “Run!”

“What? What about my mummy? Jane? We can’t leave her!”

Joan felt more tears slip down her cheeks. She doesn’t stop running.

“She’ll meet us there!”

“Where?” Kitty cried.

“Just run!!”

Kitty continues to babble for a few seconds before shutting up. She’s practically being dragged by Joan, who is running much too fast for her to keep up with. Still, she does her best, and the two don’t stop their sprint. They keep running as fast as they can, even as the leaves and roots and brush of the forest blend into an unending sea of greens and browns and ominous shadows.

From somewhere behind them, the howl of a hound rings out.

————

Joan had thought she was overwhelmed when the raid broke out. But as scared as she was, she knew she would be okay; because Lady Jane was there, holding out a hand to her. Lady Jane had always protected her. Lady Jane always looked after her, and made her feel better. Even if she was busy more often, she would help her. Joan knew she would catch her.

And then that arrow pierced through her throat and Lady Jane was dead.

Joan can still taste her blood in her mouth. She had thrown up when she and Kitty finally stopped running. If Kitty saw the red splattered across her face she didn’t question it.

They had ran for when felt like hours. At one point, they were chased by troops of raiders, but lost them in the woods. For now, they were safe.

Or, as safe as two now-orphans could be.

Kitty occasionally asked where they were going and where Jane was, but she got the message to stay quiet when Joan didn’t answer her. The two trudged on after Joan vomited- at least now they were walking.

Hours passed. Joan ran out of tears a long time ago. Kitty was trying to keep her optimism up. Sometimes she would see a rabbit or a fox and point it out, hoping to lighten the mood. Sometimes Joan cracked a smile, sometimes Joan would tug her forward, sometimes Joan snapped at her, sometimes Joan just ignored her. Kitty gave up, eventually.

They were now miles away from their home. Kitty was limping. Joan was so thirsty. They were both very hungry.

Hunting was tradition in an English Aristocrat- or that’s what the guards and nobles said. Even the lowest of peasants found thrill in wielding a weapon and hunting game. Joan and Kitty, however, never enjoyed bloodsports- that’s one thing they could agree on. Joan never fired a bow with shivering, trembling limbs, and she never thought she had to, but then she and Kitty stumbled upon the rotting corpse of a hunter in the grass.

There was a bear trap clamped tightly on the left ankle. A bow is slung around the torso. Maggots fester on the head and chest. Joan tells Kitty to look away. Kitty doesn’t disobey. She goes to collect firewood.

Joan mutters apologies as she kneels beside the body. A trail of maggots squish loudly beneath her knees. She does her best to ignore it.

The stench of the corpse is overpowering. The feel of maggots wriggling over her hands is worse.

Joan has to stick her fingers in the maggots mass to untangle the bow. They’re slimy little creatures and squirm wildly when touched, clearly angry. A few wiggle up her digits, tickling the soft flesh, and Joan shakes her hand wildly, sending the worms flying. She works faster, but that just makes the squelching noises louder and louder until-

Joan rips the bow off the rotting corpse and vomits for the second time that day.

Kitty is waiting at a nearby clearing with a pile of sticks. Joan praises her wearily.

“Joan?” Kitty speaks up for the first time in hours. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Joan mumbled. The front of her tunic is drenched in vomit, old and fresh. “Just…tired.”

“Okay.” Kitty said softly.

Joan kneels beside the sticks and then stared at them, as if she were hoping they would light if she gave them a stern enough look. Then, the took the bow, a stick, and began a technique she once read about in a book.

It was called the “bow drill” apparently. By using a bow to grind a stick against a piece of wood, enough friction would be created to start a fire. On paper, it sounded like a simple way to help in a survival situation, but actually doing it was a lot more problematic.

Joan was crouched on the ground, drilling a stick down on another piece of wood for half an hour, and all she really succeeded in was tearing strips off of her hands. Fresh blisters stung and glowed angry pink in the open air. Splinters pokes at the raw flesh, deepening Joan’s agony, but she kept trying. She feared she and Kitty would freeze during the night if she didn’t.

After nearly an hour, there were enough ashes to dump into a pile of dry moss and grass to blow on, eventually starting a small fire that grew larger and larger. Joan actually sobbed out of relief. Kitty hugged her arm happily.

It was sad, they both thought, that they thought this was the best thing to ever happen to them.

Joan told Kitty to tend to the fire while she went out to get dinner. She regretted it almost immediately, as the darkness of the forest seemed to close around her. For a moment, she swore she thought she saw a writhing black mass of human limbs in one of the shadows…

The buck had heard her coming, and Joan cursed herself. She already didn’t want to kill an innocent animal, but it fleeing was just making this even worse. She began to fear getting lost if she went any further.

The buck ran out of sight, and Joan tried to chase after it on her sore, tired legs. She pushed harshly through the brambles and bushes. She knew she wouldn’t find it on the other side. She’d given it so much warning with her clumsy noise it could be anywhere by now.

Joan turned around and began retracing she steps. She stopped, however, when she saw another deer nearby.

Joan drew her salvaged bow, staring down a trembling arrow, praying that her hands would be steady enough to keep her from starving to death. Despair set in as she released the arrow. She was clawing for one more hellish day in this nightmare that had became her life in a span of mere hours.

The deer never knew what hit her. And it was a her. Joan was able to discern that as she crouched down next to the body and brought her next arrow closer. The arrowhead was small but sharp, and she began slicing the fur away, wondering if she could make some gloves, or sleeves, or something to hold back the wind and rain that would soon come with fall.

A smaller noise squealed from her left, and she snatched up her bow. The new animal was…young. It was a deer, barely two months old, and Joan knew instantly that she had just orphaned the little one.

(Just like the raiders had orphaned her and Kitty.)

It was terrified of her, but unable to leave the mother’s body…

The helpless creature squealed again, and Joan knew it was doomed. More so than she was. She at least had learned the protection of silence. The baby’s squealing would call down every carnivore or person in the area.

Joan notched another arrow into her bow…and put it right between the little creature’s eyes.

Her lack of hesitation scared her.

(Someone told her this wasn’t going to be the only blood she will spill.)

She had thrown away more than a few of the promises she had made to herself just a few hours ago. She had promised that she wouldn’t participate in hunting. She had promised herself she wouldn’t give way to despair. She had promised herself she wouldn’t be cruel to anything or anyone that was helpless. But now she didn’t care. If someone she loved had come by with a piece of bread, she would have caved their head in with a rock to get a bite of it.

Savage. She felt savage.

Joan dragged the deers back to the camp. Kitty squeaked and looked away from the poor creature’s bodies and Joan didn’t blame her.

Gutting was a painful process. Joan might have thrown up if she had anything left in her system.

She cooks slabs of meat in the fire as best as she can. Majority of the food goes to Kitty. Joan was too nauseous to eat, anyway.

“Joan?”

When they’re about to lay down and try to rest, Kitty’s voice speaks up.

“Yes?” Joan tiredly responds.

“When are we going to see mummy again?”

Like that, the memories come rushing back. Joan had been desperately trying to repress them, but her efforts were in vain. The corpse, the creature, the raiders, the dog, Lady Jane- it all hit her like a brick and, suddenly, she’s keeled over in Kitty’s lap, weeping noiselessly. Her body was unable to produce tears anymore, but, from the growing wetness on the back of her neck, she knows Kitty still can.

The younger girl wraps her arms around Joan and Joan grasps tightly to one of her hands. She feels Kitty sobbing into her hair. Joan cries along with her until the noises turn to a full death-rattle of two orphaned children weeping in the night.


	2. Undead Lullaby

Water. 

Water was what the air in and around this part of the forest smelled like the most.

It was in the deep, earthen musk of the damp soil that lay beneath the lush, dew-soaked grass.

It was in the marshy fumes, sometimes sulfurous, sometimes sickly-sweet, of the patches of hidden swamp that lay in wait for unsuspecting feet.

It was in the carpets of fallen leaves that hid hollows between the tree roots, where pools could collect and play host to all things that crawled or squirmed through the wet.

It was in the very forest itself, coating wet leaves and bleeding from the dark, pulpy wood of the gnarled, old trees.

There was nothing dry about this place.

Fog, ghostly-grey and creeping on silent feet, drifted in low wisps over the crumbled and cold earth, painting the normally-stark outlines of the trees so pale that they faded into the sky rather than stood boldly against it. The mist had dissipated somewhat since anyone had last passed through this particular stretch of rarely-visited meadow, but not by much. Hours, though, or perhaps a day before, it had been as oppressive and thick as cold clam chowder.

Now it was slowly thinning out, listlessly lacking the eerie, almost lifelike malevolence with which it had pressed in upon the very soul before. There was a certain…uncertainty about the way it was hovering now, no longer pouring into every little hollow and alcove like milk over cereal. It was just there.

There, in a sort of in-between way. Lingering.

All was still, and- save for the rhythmic pitter-patter of falling rain- all was silent as well.

Except for herself, of course.

It was movement in the stillness that preceded the first disruption of the tranquility of the forest; the silk-thin web of drifting mist that hung in the air like lace slowly began to slide forward, rolling away from her feet like a translucent white carpet, perhaps in front of some ghostly noble attending an afterlife celebration in their name. Right from the raid the day before, her movement through this strange, still world, which her life had become, had felt alien and out of place, but it had never felt that way more than right now.

With each footstep, a narrow patch of soggy grass pressed down and sent a miniature pool of moisture bubbling up around the edges of her boots and in through invisible gaps in the leather, oozing into her already-saturated socks and settling in icy little pools in the dips where her toes went, setting the blisters on the skin alight with fresh pain. If her feet hadn’t already been numb from the wet and cold, she might have cared more. But everything from her toes to her feet and the soaked leather that clung stiffly to them was in no shape to feel anything but the dull warning stings of oncoming pins and needles.

Besides, Joan had other things on her mind right now.

Like how the old, rickety bow she had slung across her chest had its arrowheads tipped with red. And it wasn’t rust. (Could flint even rust?)

Like how the sharp, metallic tang of blood and bile and sweat was gushing off of her in waves and invading her nostrils with each breath. It was so overpowering that at times it made her want to choke.

Like how lifting her feet from the indents they made in the muddy undergrowth kept on getting harder and harder to do. Her legs felt heavier with each step and the little grassy pools made squelchy noises of protest, sucking hungrily at her feet each time they left the earth. Behind her in the grass, there was a long trail of tiny shoe-shaped lakes, like murky little grey-green cousins of the ones she had read about in books.

Like what had happened just fourteen hours before.

There was a _clank-CLONK_ and a gentle patter as droplets of condensation came raining down from where they’d collected on the bars of the town gate. There was no real latch, so she just pushed it open. There had been one once, but it had rusted away under the perpetual wet.

…Or maybe it hadn’t.

The gate’s movement ground to a halt after a mere few inches, hindered by tufts of almost-oily grass which had been allowed to grow out of control around the edges of the compound for what had probably been years. They snagged on the metal almost as though they were alive, gripping its frame with the sort of desperation one normally only saw from a particularly needy child clinging to its mother’s arm while she was on her way to work.

A half-hearted hiss of frustration escaped her as the gate’s creaking cut off. She clenched sore and swollen fingers around the wet bars, feeling flakes of rust and ancient, now-colorless paint crumble away and stick to her fingertips, which the condensation in the air had turned pruny and pale pink, like anemic raisins. When further shoving only yielded that rubbery, elastic sound that wet wild grass sometimes got, she let out a puff of air and gave up for the moment, leaning in to rest her forehead against the cool metal as she slouched, peering through the bars at the army of houses lined up within. She was so close to a roof over her head, food, maybe even water, and a damn hunk of metal was standing in her way.

“Joan?”

Joan hadn’t even realized she was dozing until the voice snapped her back to awareness. She reared back slightly, shaking her head, then looks down at the girl holding her hand at her side.

She could tell Kitty was as tired as she was. Their legs were still sore from all the running they did the day before, the rest they got was more of a doze, and they had been walking since dawn.

At least it had been dry yesterday. And relatively warm. Summer had breathed its last breaths on the tragedy, and fall replaced its absence with quick chills and a drizzle that proved to be just as hellish as a full downpour. After walking for hours through autumn’s first wrath, the town that appeared in the distance was a blessing. Now they just had to find a way in and hope the villagers wouldn’t mind.

They’d have to squeeze their tired bodies through that narrow gap, Joan realized, and she just wasn’t ready to deal with that. Maybe in five seconds. Yes, five seconds sounded good. Five seconds was plenty of time. In five seconds, her aching legs would feel a little better, her blistered feet would stop crying in agony, and she’d stand tall, shove that gate wide open, and continue her trek with renewed determination.

But that was just wishful thinking. In five seconds, her legs continued to hurt and the gate still refused to open.

“We’ll have to squeeze through,” Joan finally said. “Think you can fit through there, Kit?”

Kitty nodded and let go of Joan’s hand.

They both suddenly felt it- the cold, horrifying feeling of letting go of one another. It took everything in Kitty to not immediately cling back to Joan, but she gathered up enough courage to slip through the small opening of the gate.

“Good girl,” Joan smiled in relief.

“Your turn!” Kitty said, smiling slightly. “You can do it!”

Joan took a deep breath and pressed her body through the gap. She gets one half to the other side, then got stuck.

Icy cold fear shot through her veins, drenching her insides like a thick, dark oil spill. She knew she shouldn’t have eaten some of that deer yesterday- now she’s going to be stuck in between this gate forever.

“Joan?”

Two small hands closed around hers, squeezing tightly.

“Joan, it’s okay. You’re almost there!”

Joan screwed her eyes shut and let out a small, choked sob. She doesn’t think she’s crying actual tears, but her chest aches like she is.

“Come on, Joey. I believe in you! I’ll help you!”

There was a tug on her hand. She pushes with her foot that was still outside and inches forward, no longer wedged completely between the gates, but then a sharp pain streaks across the back of her shoulder.

“Stop! Stop!” She cried as the sharpness pressing deeper into her skin.

“You’re almost through, Joey!”

Joan struggled, deepening the pain, but manages to wiggle out to the other side. She staggered forward, nearly falling face-first into the weathered stone pavement, but manages to catch herself. She winces, feeling warmth spread across the back of her shoulder.

“You did it!” Kitty grapples back onto her hand, smiling. “I told you you could do it! I’m so proud of you!”

Joan smiles wearily at her.

“Thanks,” She said.

The two looked forward, examining the town now set before them.

The mist and drizzle may have made it hard to see, but the streets were definitely empty. Wet wood wafted heavily in the thick air from the splintering, old houses packed tightly together along the roads and alleyways. Flies buzzed wildly around rotting food, long-abandoned by their merchants.

What happened here?

Kitty and Joan walked quietly through the town, getting enough context clues to know that something wasn’t quite right. Crumbled, cracked stone pavement crunched beneath their feet; the crackle of the gravel seemed to be the loudest sound in the world on the road, but it was much better than the sloshing stew of mud out in the forest by a mile.

“There’s nothing here,” Joan muttered.

“Do we leave?” Kitty asked.

“I…I don’t…know…”

The reply came out slow as Joan’s body suddenly became heavy. She stumbled, becoming aware of a sharp sensation in her neck. The ground rushes up to meet her as everything around her began to bleed together.

The last thing she saw was Kitty’s horrified face.

————

To say that she was dreaming would be inaccurate.

Being knocked out wasn’t like being asleep, even if it resulted in more or less the same comatose state.

The dark and restless thoughts that ran through her head like little mice skittering up and over and in and out of the gaps in a rock wall were not dreams so much as memories. Or memories of memories. Or maybe they weren’t memories at all, and her brain just thought they were. The images flickered across the inside of her eyelids so quickly that she could hardly make sense of them before they were gone, like flipping through the pages of a book. All of it was accompanied by a strange, twisting sensation like her whole body was twined around a fast clock, inching round and round in tiny little circles.

If she’d been awake, the feeling would have made her nauseous.

But she wasn’t awake, so all it did was add further confusion to the mess of images and muffled sounds that were streaming through her brain like ancient text on a stone wall.

Then, suddenly, she wasn’t out.

The mismatched dream of patchwork, out-of-order memories dissolved and Joan was suddenly jarringly awake and aware of several things all at once: that she was lying on her back on something soft and lumpy and scratchy, that her nostrils were so plugged that she’d have had more of a chance of inhaling through her ears than through her nose, that every inch of her legs ached profoundly, and that she was very, very cold, to name a few.

But more than anything else, she was aware that something hard and slightly sharp was digging into the pouchy, tender flesh on stomach and chest. It hurt.

“…Hnnnnnnhg. H…hel…help…. _nnnnnn!_ ”

Making her lips form words was distinctly harder in real life than it had been in a dream. There was a whole process to it. First she had to make them form the letter-shapes, and then she had to somehow summon the energy to make her vocal cords work, and all in the scant amount of time she had before her lips forgot what they were doing and went back to being useless and rubbery again.

The mumbled pleas went unnoticed.

Her head had mysteriously gotten heavier since the last time she’d paid any attention to it and it now weighed approximately as much as a large boulder.

It wouldn’t move, no matter what she did to it. She tried lifting it, but in addition to being a boulder now, it was also apparently magnetically attached to whatever she was laying on. She tried again to move it by arching and rolling her shoulders, but all that did was send a lightning bolt of agony up and down her spine and she crumpled down with a whimper.

It’s a struggle to breathe; the weight that lies on top of her is crushing her. When she tries to squirm, the sharp, hard thing digs further into her ribs. Pain pulses behind her eyes. Her neck really hurts. There’s the salt tang of blood on her lips.

She forces her eyes open. Pale light stabs at her. Weak sunlight behind an unbreakable wall of grey clouds. It glints off the rings of the mail shirt worn by the dead body she lies on, and the one that lies atop her. There’s a face next to hers, bloodless, mouth slack. Its helm is split in two.

The weight above her is another corpse. When her limbs stop tingling, she heaves at it with rising panic and it rolls aside like a sack of grain and now she can breathe.

As she’s gasping, someone laughs, a guttural bark, and a figure looms over her. Long pale hair, tattered furs and leather and the gleam of exposed muscle.

“Don’t squirm around too much, dear,” The skinned old woman said, “You might black out again. I may have put a little too much poison on that dart.” She laughs again, then looks Joan over, “My, your eyes went wide. Don’t worry, it’s not the kind of poison you’re thinking about. It just slows your heartbeat so the guards think you’re dead.”

Joan swallows hard. Her throat is dry and scratchy. Her tongue feels a little swollen, like it had been stung by a bee.

“Come on- get up. You must be thirsty.”

Despite her age, the old woman pulled Joan to her feet effortlessly. Her hands were unnaturally smooth.

Now that her vision was cleared up, Joan was able to see that she was in a moderately sized pit filled with dead bodies of varying stages of decay. Off to the side, there was a wooden door, which she was taken into. Inside, a bunker filled with cats and lit by a fireplace was hidden.

“Here,” The old woman handed Joan a clay cup full of water. “Drink. Slowly.”

Joan obeys and drank. The water tasted amazing to her dried mouth, and she couldn’t help but gulp it all down greedily.

“Where-” She panted for a moment, “Where’s Kitty?”

“Kitty?” The old woman blinked, “You mean that little girl? She saw me before I could shoot her. Ran off into the village.”

Fear poured through Joan, just like when she had gotten stuck at the gate, but somehow worse.

Was Kitty okay? Was she alive? These questions viciously gnawed away at Joan’s mind.

“Why did you even shoot me?” Joan asked.

“You really don’t know, do you?” The old woman said, “Although, you did just waltz into this town like you owned the place. So I’m not surprised.” She sighed, “There’s a plague going around. Viral illness. If all the bodies in that pit didn’t say anything.”

“A plague?”

“Yes, a plague. Spread by rats and something people are calling ‘Hellhounds’. Vicious dogs with deadly bites.“

Joan‘s mind flashes back to the dog at the stables.

“People are losing their minds over it. That’s why this place is under such heavy lockdown. Everyone is scared to come out of their houses and anyone caught coming in from the outside aren’t exactly welcomed with open arms.”

“What…what about you?” Joan asked.

“I had all the infected flesh stripped off of me.” The woman woman answer openly, “I hide down here, now. Don’t worry if you think I’m lonely. I have the cats to keep me company.” She gestures to the several felines roaming about the bunker, “They’re special, you see. Not your normal cats. They’re good at detecting signs of the plague. Especially the dogs. Strong, too. If you’re thinking about going back out there, you should take one.”

“I have to. I have to find Kitty.”

The old woman hums. She looks around, deciding on a sphinx with grey spots.

“Take him.” She said, waving her hand. The cat jumps onto the table and sits in front of Joan. His eyes are dark amber. “His name is Mercy.”

Joan nodded silently. She watched the cat leap with his strong, springy legs and perch on her shoulder.

“Go on.” The old woman said, “I suggest checking the church for your friend.”

“I will. Thank you.”

The old woman hums again.

“One more thing. Take that.”

————

Like the old woman said, Joan found Kitty at the church. Mercy led her up to one of the window sills so she could peek in, and she watched as several villagers through stones at Kitty, laughing at the way she tried to evade them like she was a little mouse. The sight made Joan’s blood boil in her veins.

The crashing of glass interrupted the horrible game. Joan leapt down from the window- landing from such a height sent pain rattling up her already-sore legs, but she ignored it.

“Fuck, she’s alive!” One man yelled.

“Did the disease reanimate her?” Another shouted.

“I thought she was dead!” A third hollered.

“Shit, she has a weapon!” One cried.

“THAT’S RIGHT!” Joan screeched as pandemonium broke out in the church, “RUN, YOU BASTARDS!!”

The villagers were all running in different directions, desperate to get away from the “infected girl”. A few actually attempt to attack her, which she moves a bit too slowly to evade. Her throat was about to get cut wide open when a hiss came from up above. There’s a flash of pink and grey; the man is howling in agony- Mercy has his claws driven deep into his eyes.

Joan watches as he scratches and scratches and _scratches_ until one socket rips down in a large, bloody trench, and the other eyeball gets ripped right out, dangling from the string of flesh like the ball of a child’s paddle toy.

Joan stares, slightly stunned, before seeing a man charging at her out of the corner of her eye. His knife gleams in the torchlight. Joan lifts her axe and drives it into the side of his head.

The man’s skull shatters upon impact. Blood spurts into the open air. He stumbles then falls. Joan heaves the axe back down, carving a deep gash in his face. As she does so, words bubble up.

“NEVER—” There’s a horrible crack and crunch of bones. “EVER—” Brain matter, squished skin, and other fluids squelch wetly. “TOUCH—” The flesh splits open wide; muscle and tendon fray so easily. “HER—” Blood sprays out onto Joan’s face. “AGAIN!!!”

With one last strike, the man’s head, caved in and gored beyond belief, breaks open in two. The image of a melon being cut comes to Joan’s mind. Except melons don’t usually have a mutilated, mushed brain inside of their outer layer.

Joan’s lungs burned from exertion. She took deep, heavy breaths and raised one arm to use her sleeve to wipe away the sweat and blood dotting her face. The red fluid smears across her skin, but she scrubs it away as best as she can.

The axe wedged in a chunk of skull and brain matter squelches loudly when Joan pulls it free. It feels secure in her hand- normal. The weight of it is…comforting.

Mercy trots over. His paws and face are coated with blood. Joan remembers back to what that old woman said about the cats being different. When she saw the eviscerated body of an armed woman a few feet away, she believed the skinned lady about her statement- there’s no way a regular cat could spill someone’s guts like that.

Mercy jumps onto Joan’s shoulder. She uses her other, slightly cleaner sleeve to wipe off his feet and face. While she’s doing so, exactly why she just caved in someone’s skull came back to her.

“J-Joan?”

Joan whirled around. Mercy had to cling to her shoulder with his claws so he wouldn’t go flying off.

Kitty was huddled under a pew, shivering with tears streaming down her cheeks. Joan runs to her and immediately pulls her into a tight embrace.

“Oh, Kitty…” She whispers, holding the girl tightly. “I was so worried about you… Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“Th-they threw rocks at me,” Kitty whimpered, “C-called me a witch! I’m not a witch…”

“You’re not.” Joan said, “Those bastards don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“Language,” Kitty squeaked.

“Sorry.” Joan said. She squeezed Kitty again. “It’s okay, now. I’m here. I’m right here.”

Kitty buried her face in her shoulder and Joan rocks her soothingly. The younger girl cries for a few minutes, but eventually calms down. Joan gently strokes her hair.

“Feeling a little better?” Joan asked.

“Mhm…” Kitty nodded. She looked up at Mercy, who was watching her with big eyes. “Oh! A kitty!” She giggles, “Like me!”

“That’s right,” Joan chuckles. She picks up Mercy and sets him in Kitty’s arms. “His name is Mercy! He’s gonna be coming with us.”

“Mercy,” Kitty repeated. She giggles, nuzzling her nose into the cat’s neck. “He’s warm!”

Joan smiled and stood up, taking one of Kitty’s hands. She slips her axe into her belt and the two began walking out from the church’s back entrance.

“Joan?”

“Yeah?”

“When are we going to see mummy again?”

Joan faltered in her step for a moment, then continued her normal stride. The image of Jane with an arrow through her throat flashed through her mind, but she shoved it away.

“Soon.” Joan finally answered. “Soon…”

“Okay.” Kitty nods. “Where are we going?”

“To…Catherine of Aragon.”

“Oh! She’s nice!” Kitty smiled. “She always wears pretty gold dresses. I think that’s her favorite color.” She pauses. “What’s your favorite color, Joey?”

“My favorite color?” Joan thought for a moment. “Light blue is pretty. So is grey. What’s yours?”

“Pink!” Kitty said proudly.

“Oooh, good pick,” Joan smiled down at the little girl.

“I know!” Kitty said, then gasped, which made Joan’s hand fly to her axe. “Joey! Joey, look! Flowers!”

Kitty ran forward, letting go of Joan’s hand. She set Mercy down in front of a large patch of flowers growing in the church garden, then started picking some for herself. Joan walked over, slightly less tense.

“Come here, come here!” Kitty waved her over excitedly and Joan crouched down next to her. “Look.”

Kitty began weaving several flowers together in elaborate strands until they formed a beautiful little crown. She reaches up and sets it on Joan’s head, taking a moment to fix her unruly hair, then stepped back, admiring her handiwork.

“There!” She beamed, “Perfect!”

Joan couldn’t help the blush that dusted her cheeks. She raised a hand and gently touched the flower crown as if it were the most precious thing to ever exist (and it very well may have been).

“Thank you,” She whispered.

“It’s for protection.” Kitty states.

Joan nodded, smiling softly.

“Thank you, Kit. Really.”

Kitty grins widely. She quickly clings back to Joan’s hand, nuzzling her head against her arm. Mercy leaps up onto Joan’s shoulder.

“Onward!” Kitty suddenly cried, “Catherine of Aragon, prepare for Princess Kitty and her trusty bodyguard Joan: lord of the flowers!”

Joan giggled. “Don’t forget our fierce knight, Sir Mercy!”

Mercy meows.

“Oh, of course! Of course! Princess Kitty, Joan: lord of the flowers, and Sir Mercy!”

“The most powerful band of warriors to ever grace England!”

“The most fearsome!”

“The most amazing!”

Mercy warbles a meow.

Joan and Kitty burst into fits of laughter.

(It’s strange, Joan thinks, how she’s able to laugh and play pretend like this after what happened in the past two days. After she murdered someone.)

(She likes laughing and playing pretend with Kitty.)

(She likes being Joan: lord of the flowers.)

“That Catherine woman isn’t gonna know what hit her.”


	3. Run For Your Life

“Joey, I’m tired….”

It’s been a day since the experience in the town- a day worth of no rest and even more walking, not even stopping to sleep at night, and only then was Joan realizing how unwell her young companion looked.

Kitty’s face was ashen and her dull eyes were half-lidded. Exhaustion is etched all over her expression. She clung tightly to Joan’s hand as they walked. Who knows how much longer she would be able to go on before she keels over.

“I don’t know how much farther we have…” Joan said, “Would you like it if I carried you? Maybe that would help?”

Kitty nodded and Joan carefully picked her up. Her knees wobbled when she stood back up; it’s not that Kitty was heavy, quite the opposite, actually, but her legs were so sore that the extra weight put even more of a strain on her, weakening them. Still, she pushed forward, not letting her own fatigue overcome her.

When buildings finally came into view around the bend, it was a huge relief. The sky had been growing darker and the only thing that could make the growing uneasy even worse was if they had ominous shadows cast over their faces.

A ruined village stands before them. Half-crumpled buildings stood around in disarray, long destroyed by wind and rain and other weather effects. A few were still intact, like the one Joan chose to take refuge in. The bed inside was dusty, but held strong, so Joan gently sets Kitty down.

“Mmmmm…” The little girl moaned softly. Joan gently strokes back her sweaty bangs.

“Shh,” She murmured, “You’re in a bed, Kit. Try to sleep, okay? I’m going to go find some food and water.”

Kitty nodded and shut her eyes again. Mercy hops down from Joan’s head to watch over her as Joan went back outside.

As much as she didn’t want to, Joan knew she would have to hunt again. Kitty must have been dehydrated and hungry- the best thing for her right now was food and water, and Joan had to get that for her.

However, her task was cut off by a horrible, guttural noise from nearby.

Joan new exactly what it was.

There wasn’t a human being alive on the planet who didn’t know what that sound was.

Joan paused, scanning the buildings with uncertainty and- she had to admit- a certain morbid fascination. She’d been standing there listening, almost mesmerized, for a good three minutes now. It just didn’t stop.

But listening in on it- on the grunting heaves and grotesque plops of half-liquid matter hitting mud that followed- felt oddly invasive, like she was watching two people have sex. Feeling a twinge of discomfort, Joan moved away from her spot, stepping quietly as she made her way over to dingy mound of bricks that used to be someone’s house. What she found almost sent her sprinting back to the building where Kitty was, scooping her up, and hightailing it out of those ruins.

“Oh god…”

A small chest sat upturned in a mess of blood splatters and debris in the middle of the house, although it was what was sticking out of it that made Joan’s gut truly twist in disgust. A pair of naked legs, wizened and bruised, protruded stiffly from the broken lid. There was no point in leaning down to check on the state of the body- only a blind man could possibly mistake it for being anything but dead.

Joan stood back, pressing the rough fabric of her collar to her lips. It wasn’t the first dead body she had seen since her life was flipped upside down, but it wasn’t any more pleasant than the bloodied corpses she’d been lying in the day before. At least those had been in daylight, and an obvious victim of the plague that was apparently now spreading through the country. This one looked more like a murder victim. Between the grisly discovery and the retching noises from somewhere beyond, Joan almost felt as though she’d stepped straight into a crime scene.

She swallowed heavily and turned back towards the sounds.

A body meant that some monster must have been here, but those retching noises were too human to belong to one of those “Hellhounds”. That meant that whatever was in here was a person, and if they’d been here for whatever had gone down in this village, maybe they were hurt. She had to see if they were alright.

Hesitantly, Joan followed the sounds with her hand on the grip of her axe.

A few stray beams of waning sunlight glowed over the hunched form in front of her- whoever it was, they had been crouching behind a broken wall in a stew of mud, perhaps having been in too much of a hurry to empty their stomach to find a cleaner spot. Or be concerned about anything, for that matter. Flabby, pale skin flashed in the light from where they peeked out from under their owner’s shirt, and above that lay a twitching expanse of blue and white. Even in the dimness, Joan could see how the figure was quaking, convulsions rippling through its whole body as it continued to cough into the mud.

Joan’s first impulse was to recoil- as if the less-than-appealing rear view she’d just been treated to hadn’t been enough, the thoughts from her first few minutes in the town had come flooding back into her mind. Not even a crazy man could look at ruined, empty streets and buildings that had been full of people a short five years before and not wonder what had happened.

The figure shifted, the unpleasant sounds trailing off into a series of wet coughs as it lifted its head and turned to squint into the light, a mixture of nausea and trepidation sculpted onto the pale, shaven features. Then the coughing became a groan. Perhaps of relief, that the thing poking its head in from around the corner was another human being and not a creature from the plague, or perhaps of disgust and revulsion at being discovered in the middle of such a humiliating activity and at the intrusive light piercing the cramped darkness.

It was a man.

A young, somewhat corpulent man, dressed in brown pants and a green shirt, with tufts of brown hair (now plastered flat against his forehead in perspiration) swept out of his chocolate eyes. Probably somewhere in his twenties, though much older than Joan.

A man.

Not a monster.

Joan relaxed, the sour, nervous prickle that had started to tweak her insides subsiding into relief.

Relief that further faded into discomfort as the pale face turned away from her in favor of heaving into the mud again. There was a liquidy gurgle accompanying it this time, and Joan almost considered muttering a hasty apology and turning to leave him be when the figure finally spoke, in a breathless and strained voice that ran out of steam towards the end, leaving the final word a gasp of pitiful breath.

“I-it wasn’t me… I didn’t do it!”

Grasping the wall, Joan leaned back in, feeling her brows rise to a peak. As disgusting as the display before her was, she could feel very little but sympathy for this poor man.

“Do what?” She asked, although even as she spoke, her thoughts were drifting to the body in the other broken down house.

“I… I didn’t do anything. I swear,” Pleaded the stranger, still leaning over in the mud as though worried there might be more coming up. “She was like this when I got here…”

He choked again, spitting something into the mud with a grimace.

It was hardly the ideal time for an introduction, but Joan found herself giving one anyway. Mostly because she had no idea what to say on the subject of what this guy here had or hadn’t done.

“My, uh, my name’s Joan,” She offered amiably, and was rewarded with a horrible, retching belch in return that made her resolve falter somewhat. She finished with an unsure tone. “…Joan Meutas.”

“Uhm… George,” Croaked the stranger weakly.

Joan nodded slowly.

“George…” She said softly as the poor man’s vomiting resumed, keeping her tone quiet. She was pretty sure the last thing anybody wanted while they were sick was someone barging in and loudly demanding answers. “Who’s that dead guy in the chest?”

“I didn’t do it!” George moaned miserably. “I swear, I didn’t kill anybody!”

That hadn’t been what Joan asked, but she thought better of repeating herself and just stood there by the broken wall, shifting slightly and listening to the ongoing symphony of the man’s guts emptying themselves.

“Well…” She said, thinking of the body in the other room, mere yards from where George had thrown himself down to be sick. When she had come around the corner, this man had been completely vulnerable. If it had been a dog creeping behind him instead of Joan, George would have been caught with his pants down. Literally. “I guess this place isn’t too safe… What happened here, anyway?”

“Uh… I don’t know. I’m not even from this country. Passing through for business for my sister…” George explained, “That body…scared the hell out of me. Or my lunch.”

Joan hummed sympathetically, which she almost found weird given the large and very obvious age gap between them.

George has finally stopped heaving. He leaned back, wiped his mouth, grimaced at the mess he had made, then stood up.

“Sorry,” He said. “That was…” He doesn’t finish that statement, instead turning it into a light joke, “If my sister caught me like this she’d be pulling on my hair.”

Joan cracked a slight smile. She notices that George is scanning her over, probably wondering why she was out there all alone, but before he could actually ask, a deep rumbling shook the whole ground. Joan staggered a little, placing one hand on the broken wall for balance.

“Oh no…” George muttered. Joan looks over at him worriedly. The rumbling sounds get louder.

“What?”

“They’re here.”

With horrifying timing, the ground several meters away broke open and an infestation of black came out in dark waves.

Joan screams. George grabs her arm and tries to pull her to a lopsided house, but she resists.

“My friend!” She cried, “I have to get my friend!”

“What?!”

Joan doesn’t bother answering him- she beelines for the house where Kitty is, noticing several cracks forming in the dirt as she did so. George follows her and they burst into the building, scrambling to slam the door shut behind them.

“Are you crazy?!” George yelled. “You could have gotten us both killed!”

“You didn’t have to follow me!” Joan said.

“What kind of adult would I be if I let you run around during an infestation?” George snaps back.

“Joey?”

Joan and George both turned around sharply. Kitty is sitting up on the bed, holding Mercy to her chest and looking very curious.

“What’s going on? What are those noises? Who’s that?” She asked, her age making her unaware of the danger around her.

“This is George,” Joan introduced quickly. “George, this is Kitty. The cat’s Mercy.”

“Hello. WE NEED TO GO.” George said. “Grab your friend- we can climb up onto the roof from this hole.”

Joan obeys, quickly scooping Kitty up into her arms as George manages to clamber up onto the roof from a hole in the ceiling. He grabs Kitty when Joan passes her up, then helps hoist the teenager up. There, they all set their eyes upon the sea of black surrounding them.

There had to be hundreds of them. They all had the same jet black, patchy fur, so black they nearly melted into the darkness of night. Their eyes, however, were as white as a blind man’s- glazed and foggy, but something told Joan they didn’t need to see to track a person down.

“Oh god,” George muttered.

“That’s a lot of rats!” Kitty said helpfully.

“What do we do?” Joan asked.

“Nothing,” George said, sitting down heavily.

“What?” Joan’s eyes widened. “We can’t just sit here!”

“We have to. They don’t like light, but we have no fire. If we had meat we could distract them long enough to run, but we don’t have that either.” George explained, “There’s no choice but to wait until morning.”

Joan’s heart sank. She looked around desperately, praying to find something to help them, but there was nothing.

“Where did they come from?” She eventually asked, sitting down. Kitty scuttles into her arms and she holds her close to her chest.

“Don’t know,” George answered honestly. “They just…appeared one day. The church thinks it’s a warning from God. Doesn’t sound too unlikely. What kind of normal rats could come out of the ground like that?”

Joan nodded slowly. She stared fearfully down at the rats scuttling around on the ground, squeaking and hissing. They smelled of bloody mud and rot.

“So,” George spoke up again, trying to make idle conversation to lighten the tense mood, “What are two kids walking about all alone for?”

“We’re trying to find Catherine of Aragon.” Joan answered him, but her voice was slightly distant. An idea has sparked in her mind.

George whistled. “You’ve got awhile to go, kid. You still have to cross the canal to get to the mainland.” He pauses. The rats shriek wildly below. “Tell you what: Once morning comes, you both can come with me to the nearby port. The ship there will take you to my sister’s kingdom in France. She can help you out further.”

Joan nods slowly. She cups the back of Kitty’s head, pressing her face into her neck, then sits back further, trying to get comfortable on that old, rickety roof.

“Where is this port?” She asked.

“A few more miles north,” George nods in the direction of a nearby path. “We’ll follow that road and you’ll see a tower by the bay. The ship should be there.”

Joan nodded once more, thanked George for his generosity, then kicked him off of the building.

Saying the rats surrounded him was an understatement- their movements weren’t thought out, there was no moment of inspection or a hesitation to sniff; it was just a feral instinct within, a primal need to feed and, all at once, they snapped around, no matter how far or how close, and swarmed George.

The rats literally pile on top of each other, becoming one huge writhing black mass as they push and shove to get to the man. And, when they did, they began biting and gnawing and chewing the flesh off of his body while he was still screaming.

To his credit, George does put up a fight. He gets to his knees, swatting and slapping all over as if he were on fire, but his efforts were in vain. There were much to many rats and, once they tunneled into his stomach, tore his eyes out and stuck their snouts into the sockets, clawed open his throat, dug through his organs, pulled him to pieces, he was no match for their talons and teeth.

Joan watched this all, still reeling from her action, but she knew it had to be done. In the end, all that mattered in the world was her and Kitty; everybody else were mere lambs to the slaughter- a body waiting to be sacrificed, whether they wanted to die or not.

Joan leapt off of the building and ran as fast as she could. Instantly, pain ignited in her legs, and she swore she could hear her muscles singing in agony. Or, perhaps, it was just the ringing in her ears or the delusions of an exhausted young girl.

She was literally running for her life, she realized. This wasn’t like the escape from London- somehow, there was a more underlying terror that came with running away from man-eating rats than man himself. Due to this, Joan felt as if she had wings. Despite her legs pulsing in an intense pain that felt as though all her tendons were being pulled apart, she thought she was faster than usual.

It was probably the adrenaline.

In her arms, Kitty and Mercy clung desperately to her shirt, both of their nails digging in. The extra weight didn’t seem to bother her- the adrenaline rush gave her strength she didn’t know she had. If she weren’t worried about being eaten alive by rodents, then she might have marveled at her ability to run while carrying a seven-year-old and a hairless cat.

Unfortunately, fight or flight doesn’t last forever, and the full extent of her overexertion hit her like a steel mace to her knees. Suddenly, the ground is rushing up to meet her, Kitty is crying out, Mercy makes a startled warble, and there’s dirt in her mouth.

Joan lays dazed on the road like a broken doll, blinking blearily up at the twinkling stars above. Their glow bleeds together into a big silver smear that paints the night sky. In a weird sort of way, it’s almost beautiful.

“Joey!”

Kitty is shaking her back and forth. There’s fear in her voice.

“Joey, come on! Get up! Th-they’re coming!”

Joan groans softly. Her awareness wavers and she momentarily dips into complete darkness. Sleep sounded so nice right now…

“JOAN!!!”

It isn’t Kitty’s shriek that makes Joan snap up, rather the feral growl coming from the woods around them.

Joan sits up, her eyes bulging as she stares at the golden orbs peering out from the underbrush. First a paw emerges, then the leg, and finally the Hellhound slinks out into the open.

It looks like a German Shepherd, except for the twin pieces of gold shoved in its skull. It walks smoothly on its razor claws, stepping onto the path only a few yards away from Joan and Kitty. Nostrils flaring, it sniffs the air. Its tail lashes.

Mercy leaps down in front of the girls. He arches his spine, hissing lowly. If he had fur it would be standing on end.

The Hellhound snarls. Bunching it’s hind legs, it lunges forward. Mercy lunges, too, and narrowly misses the beast’s foaming jaws. He slides when he lands, hisses, then rakes his claws across the dog’s soft nose when it attempts to bite him. Blood spurts from the deep wound and the Hellhound whines like a puppy would, but Mercy has no pity for the thing. He brings his claws to the nose again and again until chunks come off and a nasty hole is left on the snout.

The Hellhound yowls, tottering backwards, then swipes its front legs at Mercy. One paw catches the cat and pins him to the ground. The black claws are so close to his throat.

Joan didn’t think another adrenaline rush was possible with her so exhausted, but she quickly found herself up on her feet and and cleaving her axe down onto the Hellhound’s neck.

The beast howls. It releases Mercy and whips around to attack Joan, only to get the head of an axe slamming directly into its eyes. The blade cuts straight through the eyeballs, gushing fluids out all over its snout, and gets lodged in its skull. When pulling does nothing to help, Joan kicks the thing in the neck and her axe jars free. She then promptly swung again and doesn’t stop swinging until the Hellhound’s head came off. Only then does she lower the axe and let herself breathe.

Mercy blinks up at her. He whacked the Hellhound’s snout one final time, then jumped onto Joan’s shoulder. They return to Kitty, who is still frozen in her spot.

“You killed the puppy…” She whispered.

Joan makes a disgruntled face. She gently rubs the top of Kitty’s head, hoping to cheer her up with the affection.

“It was a bad puppy,” Joan said. “Come on, up you go. There’s just a little further.”

Kitty nodded silently, casting a saddened look at the dead dog before taking Joan’s hand and letting her lead her down the path again.

Hand-in-hand, they walk for two and a half miles before the smell of the sea hits them. When the ocean eventually came into view, Kitty jets forward, startling Joan out of her half-daze (it’s sad that she’s learned how to nap while walking in just a span of a few days).

“Joey! Joey, look! The sea!”

Joan attempts to run after her, but her legs ache in protest, so she just walks as fast as she can without it being excruciating. She smiled when she found the little girl crouched on the rocks along the shore, feeling the chilly water and giggling when the waves spray her with a sprinkle of salty droplets.

“Have you ever seen the ocean before?” Joan asked.

“Uh-uh,” Kitty shook her head. “It’s so much prettier than the pictures!”

“Isn’t it?” Joan chuckles.

She leaves Mercy with Kitty, despite his initial resistance of meows, to let her play and found the tower on her own. It wasn’t like the towers back at London ( _don’t think about London don’t think about how you’ll never be able to go home again)_ , but it was intact and would shelter them until the ship arrived.

Oh, right. The ship wasn’t even there yet.

Joan clenched her jaw so hard it hurt, but then breathed out the harsh breath. Getting angry wasn’t going to make the boat magically appear; they would just have to wait until it showed up.

(If it even showed up.)

“Kitty,” She called and Kitty came over with Mercy trotting along behind her. “This is where we’re going to be staying for now.”

“Okay,” Kitty nodded. “Do we stay here until mummy shows up?”

There it was. That damn question. Joan didn’t blame Kitty for asking it, but it was still painful to have to hear.

“Umm… Yes.” Joan said, “A boat will come and we’re going to get on it when it does and go to France.”

Kitty huffs and stamped her foot. She seemed to be getting annoyed with how Joan kept putting off the reunion with her mother.

“Why is she there?” She whined, “I want to see mummy now!”

Joan grits her teeth. After sacrificing an innocent man, watching said man get eaten alive by rats, running for her life, and decapitating a dog, she really wasn’t in the mood to hear complaining.

“You’re going to have to wait.” She said, tone stern.

“I don’t wanna wait!” Kitty yelled, “I want mummy NOW!!”

“Shut up, you little devil!” Joan hissed.

“No!!” Kitty shrieked even louder, “You’re mean! I hate you!” She turned and ran into the tower.

Joan pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed heavily. Kitty’s “insult” was but a childish outburst, but her companion saying she hated her, despite it obviously not being true, stung more than she would like to admit.

Shaking her head and looking down at Mercy, she says, “Kids.”

————

Space was probably the best thing for Kitty right now, so Joan explored the tower by herself. Most of the rooms were dusty and old, but some of the furniture was still intact and usable. She ends up claiming a small stone room with a bed, desk, and musty bookshelf full of even mustier books to sleep in and laid there after lighting torches around the spire.

Finally in a relatively-safe place, Joan pulls off her boots, took off her tunic (it reeked and still had chunks of vomit dried on it), and laid down. Getting off her feet was a huge relief and she actually found herself sighing out loud. The pain ebbs and she rests…

A dip in the old mattress caused Joan to jolt up with a gasp. She pawed around for her axe or bow, but a tiny voice halts her.

“You’re really jumpy, Joey.”

Joan froze, then breathed out a soft sigh of relief. It was just Kitty.

“Were you hit?”

The question came out of nowhere. Added with how nonchalant Kitty’s tone was when she said it, it left Joan sputtering in confusion.

Was the torchlight bright enough to reveal the silver and red scars lacing her back? And, if so, how could have Kitty seen them with her back facing away from her?

“I-I-…” She can’t muster up the words to explain or deny or say Kitty was being weird and needed to go to bed.

“Let me introduce you to a hand that won’t hurt you.”

And then Kitty hugged her so gently.


	4. You Will Never Take Me Alive

“Aww hell. Come here, little ones, I’ll give you some change.”

Joan and Kitty froze.

It had looked no different than any of the dozens of other boats they’d seen, apart from perhaps the decorations adorning the walls of the eating hall. Portraits of oldster sailors, strange paintings of scenery- one showed a church, half-built. There were no windows down there, barely any light aside from the lanterns. People tended to drink more when they couldn’t see how light it was outside.

Despite this, Joan and Kitty tried to ignore it. They had been waiting at that blasted tower for two weeks- the first ship that appeared in the small harbor was good enough for them. But they didn’t know why they thought anyone in that grizzly, grody place would be normal.

“Where are your parents, kid?” The bartender said coldly, the conversational tone with which he’d greeted a patron that had come in shortly before Joan and Kitty nowhere in sight.

“None of your business,” Joan sniped, puffing herself up like an angry squirrel. “We just need a drink. ”

Kitty had been the first one to point out her thirst, and Joan’s was close to follow. As much as she didn’t want to go into the bowels of the boat, she also didn’t want Kitty to get dehydrated.

“Please.” Joan added, trying to lay her youth and helplessness on thick.

Relenting with a final frown, the tender waved his head around the darkened space where tables were scattered.

“If you want something, you’ll have to ask someone for some coins. I don’t hand out drinks to spoiled little kids.” He turned back to the glass he’d been polishing, muttering darkly about brats with entitlement complexes.

Joan’s hesitation made it clear that she had not thought her plan out this far, but the bartender no longer paid her any attention.

After a couple minutes of her bunching her fists unsurely by her sides, clenching Kitty’s hand tightly in hers, the voice had spoken up.

From the corner of her eye, Joan could see a group of sailors from which the voice had originated. She didn’t move for a moment, but then figured that these men weren’t stupid enough to try anything in public, so she and Kitty crossed over.

“Hold up, here, I need a favor first. Can’t just go giving money away without getting a little something in return, the world doesn’t work like that. How about you give ol’ Uncle Francis here a nice big kiss?”

Joan’s back straightened so quickly that it sent off a miniature salute of pops and cracks down her spine and a pang of agony through her temples as her head whipped upright fully.

She had stopped dead in her tracks, mid-step, and the brief thankful look that had spread across her pale, ashen face had been exchanged for one of wariness. And then there was Kitty, too young to understand, who giggled softly.

On occasion, there were people whose voices were the exact opposite of what you’d expect to be coming out of their bodies. Alcohol was one of those things that attracted people of all shapes and sizes and, thanks to her time as a maid, Joan had heard deep death-rattles coming from the scrawniest, weediest-looking nobles and voices like songbirds come out of people big enough that they could crush her head with one hand.

Such was not the case with this man. Ol’ Uncle Francis looked exactly like his voice sounded.

He was an older man, somewhere in his forties or early fifties. Oily, beetle-like eyes were set in a face that was already sweaty and red from too much ale, glinting somewhere in between the brim of a white sailor’s cap and a monster of a bristly black beard. He was big, too. The navy blue, sea-bitten tunic he wore was stretched tightly over a muscular chest and a swollen beer gut, and the sausage-like fingers that he was patting the end of his knee and beckoning mockingly to Joan and Kitty, which looked to be as wide around as one of the older girl’s wrists.

That is to say, he was rough, enormous, and looked every bit the sort of person who’d trade money for kisses from little girls in a dirty, dimly-lit bar.

The group of men he was sitting among were obviously his friends—or perhaps just worked for the same captain—because it was clear they liked him. They were all laughing like he’d just told the funniest joke in the world.

“C’mon, Francis, leave the kids alone,” Said one of them, a lanky fellow with a thick head of hair that covered his eyes and a chin of stubble as uneven as a patchwork quilt. But even as he scolded, there was a sick, yellow grin of amusement on his face, which rendered the disapproving words about as effective as trying to douse a fire with gasoline and live cats. Put a group of cruel men in one place and fill their bellies with booze and they start doing nothing but egging each other on. Joan had seen it happen more times than she could count.

“Hey, I ain’t doing anything wrong,” Beamed Francis with a smart-alecky ‘Who, me?’ expression. It was the sort of look worn by someone who thinks he’s being terribly cute and clever but has failed to realize that once you pass a certain age, the rascal act doesn’t work anymore. “Just asking the pretty ladies for a kiss. Nothing wrong with asking pretty little girls like you for kisses, is there, Missy?”

He puckered up a pair of wet red lips that were almost invisible behind the beard and made some kind of grotesque smacking noise that only passed for a kissing sound in his own drunken reality.

Joan didn’t budge. She had balled her free fist at her side and was standing perfectly still, like a rabbit that had just wandered unwittingly into a den of coyotes and only just realized its mistake. The angry, sizing-up glare was her usual confrontational one, but it, too, was a facade.

“I’m not a little girl, I’m fourteen,” She said haughtily, and if there had been a ‘State the Obvious’ contest going on, she’d have won with that sentence in a heartbeat. The fact that she had to even clarify that at all was a testament to how very, very wrong this entire situation was.

“And even if she was, she’d never kiss someone like you!” Kitty piped up helpfully.

There was a collective roar as the entire group, Francis included, exploded into laughter, pounding their fists on the table and making the glasses rattle. A few of them laughed so hard that tears, their glistening easily visible in the light of the lanterns, started to pour down their ruddy, drunken cheeks.

Less visible was the angry, humiliated flush that had started to creep up into Joan’s cheeks, and the way her fists had started to tremble. Frustrated by her own inability to be more intimidating than a bunch of burly sailors who liked to pick on kids. Of course she would be.

(She could always use her axe… Or Mercy. He’s bristled on her shoulder, claws digging into her sleeve.)

Eventually the laughter started to die and Francis lifted a hand to wipe the water away from his beetle-black eyes, wheezing.

“You’re a FEISTY little thing, aren’t you? HAW HAW HAW! Tell you what, how about you just sit in my lap instead? C’mon, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” His tone was still jovial, but somewhere deep in that mockery of a friendly voice was a threat, hidden down there like a fishing hook in a slice of bread.

Joan could only stand there as the entire scene unfolded, her body as stiff as if it was riddled with rigor mortis. She wanted to run or yell or wave her arms or something, but her feet were rooted to the floor; she couldn’t even budge. Her mental mask had now slipped irretrievably out of her grasp, leaving the paralyzed panic bare on her face. Her heart was hammering and her hands were clenched so hard that her knuckles had turned pure white, painting the nicks and cuts on them an even brighter red.

“I’d rather die,” Joan said venomously. “Go crawl back into the hole you came from, you sick fuck.”

Once again, as helpful as ever, Kitty chirped in, “Yeah! You look like you got a Scottie’s butt pinned to your face!” Then she looked up at Joan, grinning, as if hoping for praise for her comment.

The lanky patchwork-chinned man sitting alongside Francis sucked in an impressed lungful of air and gave him a playful smack on the shoulder, exclaiming, “Did you hear what that little one just said about you? This kid’s got BALLS, man!”

There was another uproarious bout of laughter over Kitty’s spunk.

This time, Francis did not join in.

Instead he sat there, staring levelly at Joan and Kitty with both hands laid flat on his knees, which had ceased their wiggling and gone still. He was still smiling, but something was different. A steely glint had entered his eyes and there was a strange, off tightness to the way he was sitting now.

There was no ripple or twitch that went over his face, or any other real indication that there was anything wrong. It had just suddenly stopped laughing and gone very, very still.

Alcohol made people do stupid things, but, sometimes, you’d get the individual who had something else wrong with them. Something deep inside, that was there before even a single drop of amber passed their lips. They’d look perfectly normal, because whatever was wrong with them, it was the sort of break that you could patch up with metaphorical thread and hide from the world as long as you had the presence of mind to do so. Then the alcohol cut that thread away and split the break wide open and let all those bad things that were locked away come boiling out like pus from an abscess.

And, out of nowhere, that same calm, smiley person who you were just talking to about the latest bear baiting could suddenly be pressing your head into the bar with their elbow in your throat, eyes alight with hysterical rage, all because you’d done something as small as accidentally scoot your drink a little too far in their direction.

And right now, somewhere behind those horrifyingly blank eyes and that placid smile, something about Kitty’s harmless, basic child insult—one that would have gotten nothing more than a groan and rolled eyes from any normal adult, or any age for that matter—had made those last strands of thread stretch out and break.

There was something very, very wrong with Uncle Francis.

And Joan had seen it coming from a mile away.

“Y’know, there’s nothing wrong with being a pretty lady,” Francis said quietly, almost thoughtfully. In some strange way, his voice had grown a little smoother than the rowdy, drunken growl he had spoken in before, and as the words floated up out of the mouth that lurked behind that tangle of hair, something about the room grew colder. “That’s what little girls like you grow up to be, y’know. They grow up and get curvy and then they don’t do nothing but hang around places like this, giving kisses to all us old sick fucks, ’cause once they all grown up, we’re the only ones that care.”

An uncomfortable silence had descended on the group around him and Joan knew that they had all sensed it too, that weird light that had turned on behind their colleague’s eyes like the tiny, silvery start of a fire, flickering silently in the corner of a room.

“…Francis, enough’s enough,” Mumbled Patchwork Man lowly after a time, in a tone much more urgent than his first scolding. He wasn’t grinning anymore.

“Shut the hell up,” Said Francis, still smiling. His eyes had not left Kitty—or blinked once, for that matter—and he leaned in slightly, the tunic rustling as his gut pressed against his knees. “They don’t do anything else, those pretty ladies, because they aren’t good for anything else. You’re gonna grow some titties soon, little girl, and then you’ll understand what I mean. You know what titties are?”

He raised his hands and clenched them in front of his chest in crude demonstration, blank smile unchanging. Nothing about his expression had changed, as though it were painted on his skin. He was wearing his own face like a mask.

“I can show you, if you’d just come over here to Uncle Francis. He could give you a head-start, because that’s what’s gonna happen to you. You’re gonna grow up and spend the rest of your life in bars like this, making these long sea trips for sick fucks like us less lonely.”

Kitty has froze, now, her grin disappearing. She’s caught in the sailor’s unblinking stare like a doe in the headlights. Her defiance was all but gone. The humor she once found in the situation vanished.

She saw the glint.

Still, because she was young and optimistic and naive, she bunched her little fists and barked out a shrill, “You’re a LIAR!“

Then Joan took her turn to jump in, snarling, “Fuck off.”

Between the high register and the unruly frizzing of their hair, their protests gave the overall effect of two Pomeranians yipping frantically at an unwanted intruder. Ineffective and almost pathetically funny, if it weren’t for the seriousness of the situation.

Undeterred, Francis just leaned in further, causing Joan to step between him and Kitty, his eyes gleaming. There was a hoarse, longing quality to his voice now. The words that he was speaking had a sort of sickening life to them, crawling out of his lips like so many dark spiders and insects that were pouring out of the crack in his head.

“They got a word for that, you know. They got all kinds of words for what little girls like you grow up to be.”

The bartender. Why the hell isn’t the bartender doing anything?

Joan looked over her shoulder frantically, desperately and spotted the tender walking his way with a dishcloth in hand, face blank as he determinedly ignored the goings-on in the corner of the room.

“…Stop this!” Joan faintly heard someone sitting at the bar whisper, “Make them stop, right now! ”

“They can leave any time they want,” Said the tender coldly, reaching out with manicured fingers and trying to peel the hand off of his arm, since the person must have grabbed him urgently. All the false warmth from his initial greeting was gone and for just a moment, Joan had to wonder if there was something wrong with him, too. Would a normal person just let something like this happen? “They haven’t had a finger laid on them. A little scare will teach the brats not to come into places like this anymore. Touch me again and I’ll have you thrown out into the ocean.”

The person pulled away and felt silent.

“And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t interfere over there, either.”

With one last cold glare, the tender continued on his way, back turned to the entire scene. He disappeared through a door and into some back room- Joan heard his boots clop against the floorboards, eventually disappearing, and she was stunned. Did he not hear the sickening words floating out of this dark corner? Had he seriously failed to notice that diseased light in the bearded man’s eyes?

Then it occurred to Joan that the tender probably _had_ seen it.

He just didn’t _care_.

No one in the room seemed to care.

Not enough to do something.

And that left Joan, teetering on the raggedy edge between forcing herself out of her shock or standing there and watching, just waiting for something awful to happen to her or, more importantly, Kitty.

“I know every one of those words, little girl. I know what you are. ”

No one was saying anything now. No one except for Francis, whose voice had gone even quieter, though Joan could still hear every word through the silence. But she still couldn’t move. Even though she wanted to so badly, all she could do was watch like helpless prey, with a strange feeling that her lungs were burning up. Like she’d been underwater too long without air.

“I know them all, from A to fuckin’ Z. Every one of those pretty little words. I could tell y—hey HEY I’M TALKING TO YOU! ”

And there it went.

Just like the first snap, there was no transition, no prior warning, no signal that indicated that something was about to happen. It just did.

Joan’s body had finally remembered how to move, and she shoved Kitty back, causing the girl to turn, possibly to run for the door, and this, like her ill-timed ‘Scottie’s butt’ comment, changed everything.

In the middle of his sentence, Francis’ voice had turned into a roar, abrupt and jarring.

The stool he had been sitting on clattered to the floor as he lurched to his feet so swiftly that Joan could almost hear the whoosh of air as it rushed into the space that his hulking body had previously been occupying.

And his placid rubber mask of a face crumpled, contorted like a tin can being crushed in someone’s fist, stretched and broke and cracked around the edges, the flesh twisting into a thousand rage-induced wrinkles and crevices as his eyes squinted, almost like he was going to burst into tears.

The beard finally parted enough to show a black pit of a mouth yawning downwards into an elongated upside-down ‘D’ shape that wobbled and distorted in the dim, flickering light as he clenched ham-sized fists and howled.

“YOU LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU, YOU LITTLE SLUT!! ”

There was a rapid clunking of stool legs and shuffling of feet as the other members of the group scrambled out of the way, finally realizing what Joan had sensed to begin with and abandoning ship lest one of those fists decided it wanted to find its way around a nearby throat.

Joan spun halfway around in alarm, only to freeze when she heard a squeal of alarm as a fist closed around Kitty’s scrawny arm. It didn’t stay there for long, because her immediate and perfectly-justified reaction was to rake her nails across it with such force that there was no way she hadn’t drawn blood. The arm recoiled by pure reflex, but Francis didn’t.

“PRETTY LADIES!” He bellowed, staring straight ahead, and it was obvious he didn’t see either girl anymore. He was seeing something else entirely, something that probably only existed in his alcohol-soaked brain. “I LIKE THEM! They make it STOP!”

He was moving towards Kitty again. His words now made sense only sporadically, like someone banging randomly on the keys of a piano.

Francis was bawling, now, mouth wide open like a squalling baby.

“Pretty ladies are supposed to make it feel better! WHY WON’T YOU MAKE ME FEEL BETTER?”

Why was nobody else doing anything?

“NO!” Joan screamed, stumbling backwards, pushing Kitty behind her, before finally, too late, trying to run.

_I should do something, but I can’t. What’s stopping me? I just can’t, like I couldn’t help Jane…_

There was a crash and a tinkle of glass. Francis had snatched up a half-drunk bottle of wine and hurled it at the girls, who both had shrieked and ducked, falling to their knees in the process, causing it to miss their heads by inches and shatter on the edge of a table, showering them with sharp fragments.

The sound, as though jerking him out of some kind of dream, made Francis blink and look down at the cowering children, falling silent for a moment.

Then he knocked Joan away with one swing of his meaty arm and reached for Kitty. The gleam in his eyes was so strong it was as though a bonfire had been lit behind them, making them shine glassily through the river of tears flowing out of them.

He no longer wanted a kiss.

He wanted to feel a neck, frail and brittle like a little bird’s, snapping between his fists. Because that would be just as good as a kiss, in its own way. There was more than one reason that the euphemism ‘choking the chicken’ existed, at least for Francis.

But he wasn’t the only one primed for blood.

The only warning that Francis had was the shuffle-thud of uneven steps.

And if Joan hadn’t been on the ground, there wouldn’t have been any warning at all.

The bearded man had only just started to turn his head away from the now-crying little girl he was reaching for, the sound somehow registering through the crack in his mind long enough to catch his attention rather than the movement of the nearby teenager.

There was a horrendous smashing of broken glass and snapping wood as Joan ploughed straight into Francis, knocking him backwards and directly into a nearby table, which actually snapped under the big man’s weight.

Part of it was pure, dumb luck. Joan was much smaller than Francis- she was fucking fourteen- and, despite having a little muscle from a life of servant work, a hell of a lot lighter. 5’0 didn’t provide much, but the sailor had been leaning forward, so focused on the his prey’s helplessness before him that he hadn’t been prepared for the sudden, unexpected attack.

He keeled downwards with an explosive splintering of wood, letting out a surprised grunt. Carried by her own momentum and knocked off-balance by a table leg slamming against her left ankle, Joan went with him and they both plunged to the floor in a tangle of flesh, fists, and broken brown shavings.

The unfortunate fellow who had been sitting at the now-trashed table woke from his drunken stupor instantly and scrambled backwards away from the mess with a partly-outraged but mostly-startled, “JESUS CHRIST!”

But it was drowned out by the howl of surprise and rage that came from Francis, which was so powerful that Joan could feel it vibrate through her entire body.

“AAAARGH! YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

The beetle-black eyes that were glaring into Joan’s, only inches away from her face—so close that she could smell the stench of daily alcohol abuse on Francis’ breath and feel its sour heat as it puffed against her tender throat in hot clouds—were no longer lit up with that sicklight. As was often the case, that inner crack sometimes knew when to conveniently mend itself back up again. Until the next time it broke open, of course.

But now the eyes were alight with a different kind of crazy, one that was much more commonplace.

Plain, old-fashioned drunken rage.

The entire left side of Joan’s face exploded into bright, colorful bursts of pain as a fist that seemed to be the size and solidity of a small boulder came smashing upwards and her whole body popped backwards in a fashion that was almost cartoonish. A near-perfect arc, like in those old children’s books she sometimes walked in on Jane reading to Kitty, where the bad guy got humorously pummeled with a bat or some silly object.

However, there was a very significant difference between those books and real life, and the difference was that in real life, it hurt. It hurt a lot.

The punch had such force that Joan thought for one petrified instant that she might do a full flip, but then her back met the floor with an unforgiving _THUNK_.

She barely had time to clap a hand to the smarting flesh on the side of her face, which she could already feel starting to get puffy, before she heard wooden shards crunching under boot as Francis climbed to his feet, looking more like some kind of hulking mountain rising than a human being.

A terrible, rumbling growl that would be more befitting of a wild animal came erupting out of his throat and whatever part of Joan’s panicked brain was spitting out all these nonsensical comparisons quickly replaced ‘mountain’ with ‘volcano’. Mouth twisted into a snarl, Francis clenched his knuckles with an audible crack and reached down with alarming swiftness to wrap those sausage-like fingers into Joan’s shirt-collar, gathering a ham-sized fistful of fabric and sending the scars scattered across the girl’s back alight with pain once more as they were exposed to the cool air.

“You just made the biggest mistake of your miserable life, little girl ,” He spat. “I’m gonna beat you so hard, you’ll be turned away from the pearly gates because there won’t be anything left of your face for Saint Peter to recognize!”

As her torso was jerked upwards off of the floor, two main trains of thought were running frenetically through Joan’s mind.

One was: _…No. No, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what the biggest mistake of my miserable life was, and it wasn’t stopping some perverted old man from cracking my little sister’s neck and then raping her corpse._

The other was not in words so much as a series of spontaneous realizations as she noticed the shards of bottle-green glass poking out of the fabric of Francis’ pant leg, courtesy of the heavy fall they’d both taken onto the debris of table and bottle alike.

Gritting her teeth, Joan bunched the muscles in her right leg- the one that hadn’t been whacked with a solid beam of table wood- and brought the sole of her boot slamming down against the sailor’s shin.

She had always been a terrible kicker, from as early as the days of being picked last for ball games in her old village, to as recently as a weeks earlier, meekly attempting to fend off bloodthirsty dogs in a forest. But it didn’t take much force to drive a bunch of jagged, razor-sharp fragments of glass through cloth and into flesh.

Francis screamed and Joan’s back abruptly met the floor again as she was unceremoniously dropped.

“AAUGH! You little BASTARD!” Francis howled, his voice tight with agony as he staggered backwards. Any further words on his part just sort of trailed off into a long stream of obscenities as he lashed out a flailing hand for Joan once more.

But this time something was a little different, and in a strange way, Joan wasn’t entirely certain that something in her own head hadn’t cracked open a little bit too, because the light from the lanterns didn’t really look gold anymore.

No…now it was starting to look a little _red_.

She was not a strong person. That much she was sure of. A strong person would have done something far, far sooner than she had—not been rooted to the floor like a worried spectator on the sidelines of a childish brawl, afraid that a parent might come out at any second and think she was involved.

But for a month and a half not so long ago, she had fought tooth and nail, arrow and blade, to survive.

Her, Joan Meutas.

She’d been mauled, strangled, shot at, bludgeoned, beaten, thrown, dragged, and ran so long and hard that her lungs seemed ready to burst and her feet felt worn to the bone.

It didn’t matter that she had been terrified to the point of tears at times, or that she’d done just as much fleeing as she had fighting. She had taken on monsters and lived, as much as one could say that someone like her could live after everything that had happened. Genuine, honest-to-God monsters, the kind that haunted dreams and lurked beneath beds.

Well…ol’ Uncle Francis might not have emasculated a man right in front of her with his teeth, or shot the only mother figure she has ever had dead, or attempted to rip her to pieces…but if there was one thing Joan was sure of, as the memory of the sicklights deep in the back of that sailor’s skull floated in front of his mind’s eye, it was that Francis was just as much of a monster as those rats and dogs had been.

And Joan knew she could fight monsters.

Scooting hastily away from the grasping arms, Joan snatched up the broken table-leg that she’d tripped on and struck out with it with such ferocity that the sound it made when it rapped across one of those beefy hands rebounded like a whipcrack.

There were yells coming from the crowd around her, but Joan didn’t care. She could hardly hear them. They were blocked out by Francis’ roars of pain and anger, along with a sort of ringing in her own ears. All the pain leaking into her consciousness from the wounds all over her body were gone, blotted out by the force of the adrenaline rushing through her veins.

It was, perhaps, a sad sort of testament to the effect the past month had on Joan that this state of mind had become the norm. It had grown almost as familiar and oddly comforting as the buzzing glow of liquid courage.

Her protective mask had long since abandoned her.

Right now, there was only herself and a monster.

And if she didn’t keep that monster at bay, she would wind up dead. And so would Kitty.

Joan ducked under another locomotive-like punch, feeling the wind from it ruffle her hair as it swept millimeters over her head. She wasn’t so lucky for the next swing that came her way and her already-sore waist was the victim this time.

Rocking backwards, the edge of a table against her back was all that kept her from falling. She grasped it with one hand determinedly to shove off from it again, and was vaguely aware of an uproar from the onlookers.

Aside from the dull ache in her side, the full pain failed to register and Joan launched forwards once more, swinging the table leg back and forth, up and down, heaving it through the air in front of her like an utter maniac. Francis’ fists continued to fly, but they couldn’t hit her anymore. They couldn’t even get close, not without encountering her impromptu weapon.

Frustrated by his sudden lack of ability to hit his younger, smaller, less-muscular, and already-wounded opponent, Francis opened his mouth to howl something else; possibly another volley of abrasive language. But as far as Joan was concerned, the monster had said more than enough already.

So, for the first time since she’d been standing there as she let ol’ Uncle Francis harass her and Kitty, Joan really spoke up.

What came out wasn’t much of words or a battle-cry. It was just a noise, one that had been boiling up in Joan’s chest for hours; long before she had entered the bar, or got onto the boat, or started working for Jane at all.

Joan didn’t yell a whole lot, never had. She’d always had the tendency to quietly brood when her temper ran high or her spirits low, something that had helped facilitate her transformation over the past month and a half when all hell broke loose.

So in reality, the noise that was escaping her right now was one she’d been holding back for a very long time.

It sounded stupid. But it felt good.

So she kept doing it.

Swinging the leg like a whirlwind, completely forgetting about her axe, Joan went after Francis, not caring whether she hit him or not so much as just pushed him back, and she yelled the entire time. Intimidating or not, when a sound was being uttered over and over by a teenage girl who’d just survived the closest thing to Hell that could exist on God’s green earth, a teenage girl with wild eyes, a bruised face, and a weapon…

It was a goddamn battle-cry.

Eventually the expression on Francis’ face went from violent, to frustrated, to uncertain, and then at last to genuinely worried.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” He roared over Joan’s screams, trying to put a table between himself and the crazy girl in the vomit-stained shirt. “I didn’t do a goddamn thing to you!”

Joan’s reply was to bring the table-leg down with an enthusiastic crack against one of Francis’ kneecaps, causing the man to bugle with pain and stumble.

Her war-cry finally ceased to be a long string of A’s and formed into grating words that tapered off into howls at their ends, each one punctuated by a swing of the table-leg and a small, splattery spray of red as she spat them out.

“LEAVE—!” _Swish!_ “HER—” _CRACK!_ “ALOOOOOOOONE!”

It took a moment for, seemingly, the words to register in the sailor’s broken brain. But when they did, his eyes started to widen. Which made Joan feel even better than the yelling did.

“I WASN’T GONNA TOUCH HER!” He hollered, and Joan was pleased to hear that there was a definite note of fear in his voice. He leaned back to avoid a particularly vehement swing of the leg. His cap had been knocked sideways, taking that ominous shadow off of his eyes. Their whites were visible. Somehow, that made him less frightening. “I WAS JUST TRYING TO SCARE YOU TWO, YOU FUCKING PSYCHO!”

Hearing that one made Joan almost want to laugh, to cackle like the psycho she’d just been called and say, _‘Buddy, I may be crazy, but anyone here can see that you’re the psycho!’_ But she didn’t. Instead she just screamed, again, “LEAVE HER ALONE!”

But her arms were starting to tire, their swinging starting to slow. No amount of adrenaline, pent-up battle cries, or liquid courage could change the fact that her body was hurting and exhausted.

Her decision to turn to her old, numbing standby instead of giving her body what it really needed (a little something called sleep ) was costing her.

Scared or not, crazy or not, Francis knew what he was doing better than Joan did and, as the table leg made another vicious pass, scant centimeters away from his face, he took advantage of the small window of opportunity while the momentum forced Joan to carry out the swing.

“JOAN!!!”

Kitty’s terrified voice registered for just a moment, and then is wiped out by intense ringing.

All the breath in Joan’s lungs left her in a whoosh and a spray of saliva droplets that splattered onto Francis’ tunic as one of the sailor’s boulder-like fists dipped low and slammed upwards into the girl’s stomach. The table leg hit the floor with a clatter as Joan staggered backwards, her aching ankle buckling underneath her and nearly causing her to join her fallen weapon on the floor.

She’d had the wind knocked out of her more than once, and she knew that in a few moments she’d be fine again- or as fine as someone who’d just been socked in the gut could possibly be- but this wasn’t exactly the kind of situation where she had moments to spare for breath-catching.

And on top of that, the human body had a tendency to freak out when it couldn’t breathe. Like, a lot.

She choked and spluttered, mouthing like a fish out of water as she tried to pull air into lungs that just weren’t ready to get back on their feet yet. Through the oxygen-deprived haze that was covering her vision, she saw Francis’ expression return to a confident, determined desire to deliver a world of pain unto his young, raggedy opponent. The fists clenched again.

One more hit from those would end the fight, and Joan couldn’t afford to let that happen. Francis’ mask had come back, the invisible thread patching that crack back up and hiding the sicklights, but they were still there. Waiting.

So, the one little part of her brain that was smarter than the rest of it was, the part that only seemed to awaken when she was in immediate danger or dying, spontaneously came back to life and drifted in over the panicked alarm bells in her head.

_Joan. You don’t need to breathe to spit._

This was true.

So, as Francis came swooping in for the kill, Joan immediately tried to recall the last time she had spit on someone. The result was pitiful and slightly blood-tinged from her biting a chunk out of her lip, but it hit Francis in the eye and distracted him and was therefore good enough for Joan.

Caught off-guard, Francis clawed at his eye instantly, as though worried Joan might have just spat acid at him. The survival-oriented part of Joan’s brain took this moment to helpfully add, _You don’t need to breathe to kick, either._

So as her chest was trying to heave and not fully grasping why it couldn’t, Joan once again kicked at the spot on Francis’ leg where she knew the broken glass was embedded, gaining an agonized scream for her efforts.

Howling, Francis threw one punch, too late, in Joan’s direction. It missed by a mile. Or maybe several feet. Whatever, Joan was too busy to think about whether or not her hyperbole was accurate. The sailor’s glass-filled leg buckled and he started to pitch backwards. Joan decided to help him out.

Throwing herself forward, Joan pushed every ounce of weight in her tiny body into her lunge and slammed into the off-balanced Francis with her right shoulder.

It worked.

This time, there was no table to block or slow Francis’ fall and the immense, glass-rattling crash that resulted from the pure, uninterrupted impact of his lumberjack-like body hitting the floor was almost magnificent. Joan landed on top of him, one knee digging into the bearded man’s gut. The dull roar that Joan’s ears registered from the crowd around them cast the surreal illusion that this was some kind of spectator sport in a stadium.

It wasn’t so much a split second that the two looked up and down at each other. Somehow, the descriptor ‘a split second’ seemed too long to appropriately do justice to that freeze-frame of an instant during which their eyes met.

Francis’ were wide enough that Joan could see herself in them, and scared enough that she could almost see the sailor’s very thoughts printed in neat, readable letters over the sewn up line behind which the sicklights waited. He was wondering what the hell had just happened, where this pitiful-looking, mangy little girl had come from and why he, Francis, was not winning the fight anymore. And he was frightened.

To be fair, up close, Joan probably looked pretty unsettling. What with the bloody lip and wild eyes and all.

This time it was Joan’s fists that alternately snatched hold of her opponent’s coat collar and drew back in preparation to come slamming downwards. Conveniently, her lungs picked that moment to start re-inflating. The process was so painful that it registered even through the reddish-feeling, numbing haze that had settled over her wounds the moment she’d launched herself into the fight, but she didn’t care.

Drawing herself up, she filled her aching chest with air and then leaned down to bark straight into Joan’s face, in a voice that was far too high-pitched and croaky to get across the true extent of the anger behind her nonetheless heartfelt words, “Leave us ALONE, you mangy old BASTARD!”

And then she punched Francis in the face.

It felt great.

So she kept doing it.

Her punches had nowhere near the amount of force behind them as Francis’ did, but just as that scream had been building up for hours days months, there was a boiling, bubbling rage somewhere between her battered lungs, and she had a feeling it wouldn’t go away until her bruised knuckles met the flabby, bristly face of the man who had tried to hurt Kitty as many times as they could.

Each occasion upon which this momentous event occurred was accompanied by a word that was harshly grated out through Joan’s gritted teeth.

“Don’t—you—ever—touch—her—again!!”

It was hard to tell just how long this continued. Joan, more than most people, knew how time could pass as slow as molasses or as quickly as flipping right through a book depending on what was happening. She might have been there, pinning Francis down with her knees and slamming her clenched fist down again and again for five minutes, or it could have been five seconds. It was really, honestly hard to say.

But the spell ended when a booming, crashing noise cut through the rumbling in her ears.

She didn’t quite remember falling—it was more like one moment she was doing the punching, and the next she was sprawled flat across Francis’ chest, her face pressed unpleasantly into some sweaty crease between throat and jawline, with wiry, unwashed beard hair prickling against her neck and the stench of beer and sweat invading her nostrils, even overpowering the reek of her own blood.

It was a blessing that she was only there a couple of seconds before Francis’ shovel-like hands shoved her urgently onto the floor, where she scrambled away, partially hiding beneath a table.

The candles above swam and shimmered before her eyes. As a ring of faces clambered above her in a circle, it was hard to tell just how many were there in reality because there were multiples floating around beside their twins, like they were all trapped in the corner of a House of Mirrors.

They all were looking around, stumbling, and it was only then that Joan registered that the boat was rocking much more than it should be on the calm waves.

A second crash sounded and the entire boat seemed to erupt in a cacophony of screams as something huge ripped up from the bottom of the ship and burst out of the wooden floorboards.

Whatever it was, it was thick and giant. Half black and half white. The colors seemed to glimmer like…scales?

This thing splashed down into the water, rattling the broken ship wildly. People were scampering all over the place. Francis was still lying on the ground, dazed. Kitty was frozen.

Joan leapt up. She saw Kitty look at her, eyes wide, and she ran to her.

In that moment, time seemed to slow down as that scaly, huge thing came back up from the wine-dark sea and broke the boat in two.

Joan uselessly reached her hand out to Kitty, but it did nothing to help. Freezing black water embraces her, and the last thing she sees is two huge red eyes staring at her.


End file.
